Education

More than 130 people attended the Birmingham and West Midlands Yom Hashoah commemoration held at the King David School. Because of the current situation in the Ukraine, the event focused on the events of the Holocaust there including the massacre at Babi Yar, interspersed with excerpts from Shostakovich's Babi Yar Symphony.

Educational provision at the Wohl Ilford Jewish Primary School nursery has been taken over by an external provider. As of the new term, it is being operated by Little Bicks, which runs Jewish nursery schools in Borehamwood and Mill Hill.

In less than a year, no fewer than seven Jewish schools have been rated as inadequate by Ofsted — the lowest of the four inspection grades. All but one of the schools is Charedi and most are independent.

An Essex man is trying to take his local council to the European Court for Human Rights after being fined for removing his daughter from school during Shavuot.

Paul Clements, from Romford, whose wife is Jewish, was fined £60 by Havering Council after the family went away to Ibiza for five and a half days in term last spring, which included the two days of the festival of Shavuot.

Members of the community are being urged to take exams in Hebrew to save GCSEs and A-levels in the language from being scrapped.

The appeal, from the Board of Deputies, comes after the OCR and AQA exam boards, which offer biblical Hebrew and modern Hebrew respectively, announced that both subjects face being axed in 2017 alongside other "non-traditional" languages.

The headteacher and chairman of governors of Clore Shalom primary in Shenley, Hertfordshire, have said they were disappointed after inspectors downgraded it from a good school to one which "requires improvement".

It is the second time within a week that a state-aided Jewish primary has received a critical report following the demotion of Rosh Pinah in Edgware to inadequate.